Dana just shook her head.
Perplexed, John took another step closer. If she wasn’t hurt, then what was wrong? “What happened?”
“I found those,” Dana said, pointing.
That was when John realized where they were. This was the little copse of trees where he had erected a small memorial to his parents. The dark shadows Dana pointed at were the two mounds of stone placed in their honor. John closed his eyes, missing his parents more than ever.
“Who were they?” Dana asked. It was clear she knew what the memorial was.
“My parents.”
It felt both long ago, and at the same time, like it was yesterday. John could remember the details of the day she’d died, although the memories were getting fuzzy around the edges. So much had happened since then that it felt like it must have been years ago, but it wasn’t. A handful of days? Two handfuls? John tried to get a good tally in his head, but he couldn’t be sure.
“I’m sorry,” Dana replied, her voice hollow.
John crouched next to her. She’d stopped crying but her face was streaked with tear-tracks. The memorial to the departed had bothered her. More than bothered her, they’d deeply disturbed her in some way. John tried to think what might have caused the reaction. He’d cried that hard while laying his mother to rest, but they weren’t her parents, so why?
Then he remembered what Dana told him about the place she’d come from. There used to be many people there, she said. They all died in the space of a week. Some sort of illness had destroyed their entire community.
“How many?” John asked in a soft voice. He sat down on the ground next to her. “How many graves did you dig for your people?”
Thirty-Two
Dana didn’t respond to John’s question at first. He kept silent to give her time to collect her thoughts. John tried to imagine what she had been through. Had she buried not just her own parents, but other people, as well? Other families? Children? Dana said she had lived in a community of people. John felt a little pang of jealousy at the thought but pushed it away. More people also meant greater loss. They'd all died in the course of one week.
It looked to him like Dana was panicking as bad as he had when he had approached the tunnel. Maybe even worse because the devastation returning in her mind wasn’t just her own life fading away but the loss of every person she’d known and cared for. John tried to imagine the grief he’d felt for his mother’s loss, multiplied. He flinched at the immensity of it.
Dana gave a heavy sob, then whispered into her hands. “All of them. Too many. I lost count. Dozens, anyway.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” John asked. “We can go to the fire instead. Whatever you need.”
There was another long moment of silence. John kept quiet, slowing even his breathing. She was hurting. He needed to be there for her in this moment, to be whatever she needed. At last, she began to speak, still looking down at her hands.
“The illness swept through our town in a matter of days. It was brutal,” Dana said. “The first day, a dozen people were sick. Half of them were dead by the next morning. Nothing like that had ever happened before.
“But by morning, when we were just beginning to mourn the dead, another two dozen people were ill. That was over half of the village. We knew we were in trouble at that point,” Dana said. “By the end of that second day, only a few of us were still healthy. We tried to bury the dead as quickly as we could. By the end of the third day, I was the only one left.
“I kept at the work of laying them all to rest. It was mechanical, simple. I dug a big hole, then laid bodies into it, then covered it back up. Mass graves. No nice markers like this spot,” Dana said. “I didn’t have time to dig individual graves for them.”
“But you were never sick?” John asked.
“Not even a sniffle,” Dana replied, looking at him at last. “I was waiting for it. After everyone else was ill or dead, I knew it was only a matter of time. I dug graves for the others, but all the while, I knew that eventually I would get sick, too. And there was no one left to bury me.”
“That sounds awful,” John said. It was a lame thing to say, the right words failing him. What could he say that would take away that pain, the feeling of everyone you ever knew dying around you, struggling on and knowing that you too were going to die? But there would be no one left to care for you as you got sick, no one to put your body in the ground once you were gone.
Come to think of it, that was pretty much the same scenario he’d been in after his mother passed. It wasn’t scores of deaths, but it was the only other living human he knew. He’d been left alone to carry on. Maybe he did have a better idea what Dana was feeling than he had first thought.
“I am here if you want to talk about it,” John said. “You don’t have to be alone anymore. We can help each other, be there for each other.”
“Until you die, too, right?” Dana asked. She looked at him again, her eyes teary and haunted. “Everyone left me. Just like your parents left you. Eventually, you’ll die too, and I’ll be alone again. Better to spare myself the pain and just stay alone. At least that way I won’t be hurt when you die. And you won’t be hurt when I do.”
“We’re better off together,” John said. More than anything, he didn’t want Dana to leave, and he had a feeling she was on her way. If she left, John didn’t have any idea how he could get her back. He was surprised that this woman had become important to him after such a short period of time. But perhaps it made sense. He’d been so lonely. Someone to speak with was a gift beyond anything he could have hoped for.
Regardless how it had happened or why, John needed her to stay. But how could he convince her?
“Think about the gator attack today,” John said. “Together, we were able to beat it. But I wouldn’t have thought of cooking the thing without your being here. It would have been wasted. I still don’t know how to smoke the leftover meat. We complement each other.”
Dana shook her head. “I can’t. I want to, but I just can’t.”
Tears streamed down her face. John’s mind raced, trying to think of something else he could say. Anything that might work. Dana stood, pulling her hand away from his. John opened his mouth to say something, to tell her how important she was to him, but the words just wouldn’t come.
“I’m sorry, John. It’s better this way. Neither of us gets hurt,” Dana said.
I do, John wanted to say. I get hurt if you leave. He could feel the wound already forming, the loneliness settling back in. But he kept silent. If this was what she wanted, then how could he keep her from it? Better to let her go.
John closed his mouth and nodded silently to Dana. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He wanted to tell her how much her leaving would hurt him, but he didn’t want to guilt her into doing something she didn’t want. She had to be free to choose her own path. So, all he did was nod as she gave him a weak smile, turned away, and followed the wall toward the river.
She was headed toward her own side of the world, he knew. She was going back to the place she’d claimed as hers. Dana would expect him to stay on his side, unless she invited him over. The day together, spurred into place by the rush of the attack and their survival, was over. He could feel it melting away like it had never been.
But it had been. John would cling to those memories and keep them close. She might never return to him. They might remain strangers who saw each other only rarely. If that was the best they could be, he would find a way to live with that. But at least he had the memory of something more, if only for a moment. It gave him hope that perhaps someday he could have that again.
If not with Dana, perhaps with other humans. She had come from somewhere. There were others like them out there. John could feel it. He wouldn’t give up trying to find them.
Thirty-Three
Felizian looked on through his monitors, watching the human female. She was constructing a new nest for herself, tucked between several large tree branches. The entire construction was cu
nning, but it wasn’t new to him. If anything, watching her work was almost…boring. He’d seen it all before. She’d learned how to build this sort of dwelling from her parents and other people in the cluster of animals with whom she’d lived.
Most importantly, she wasn’t doing what they wanted her to do, which was interact with the male specimen. It was frustrating, watching them continue their daily activities apart from each other. At first, it seemed like Kantrobil’s idea was working. The two had shared food and laughed and talked with each other. The reptile attack had helped them bond. Then it all went wrong.
“It’s been five days, Kantrobil. How long do we wait before we admit this specimen is a failure and try the other one?” Felizian asked.
“I wanted to get a good baseline on the female’s hormone and brain chemistry levels before we took action,” Kantrobil replied.
Felizian knew that. The nanites inhabiting all of their specimens had been sending back piles of data for days now. He’d looked over the incoming reports, and it was clear the female had levels of certain brain chemicals that were wildly off where they had been before. The trauma of her people dying around her had caused some sort of injury. This was unexpected. They had not witnessed this sort of reaction from the human specimens before, but once they knew what to look for, they saw a similar shift in the male’s brain chemistry. His dated to immediately after the collapse of his tunnel.
In some way, trauma had a lasting impact on the actual chemistry of the specimens’ brains. Fascinating and wonderful new information. It would be a worthwhile branch to study, in due time. But it was frustrating, as well, since they had plans for these two, and it seemed this strange brain function was acting to thwart them.
Where the male’s brain chemistry was only a little off, and seemed to be slowly returning to baseline, the female’s shift was much more dramatic. The reaction she had to seeing the gravesite had set off a fight or flight response, which was completely out of proportion to the event in question. Nor had she recovered in the days since. She was continuing to function. But her brain chemistry remained off, and she was keeping to herself. She refused to be in the presence of the male at all.
“And? What are the results showing you?” Felizian asked. He already knew the answer, having access to the same data himself. But he wanted them to be in accord on this matter before they took action.
“I don’t see any changes to her brain chemistry over these past days. Not even a small shift. Which means it might be a very long time before her brain heals from the trauma, if it is able to heal at all,” Kantrobil said. “It’s possible that if we erase the memories, maybe that will repair the functioning? But I’m not sure even that would work. The brain chemistry of these animals is unusual.”
“We can’t really have her forgetting something that she’s already told the male,” Felizian said. “The time to do that would have been before they met. But we didn’t know at the time how serious her reaction might be. It’s simply too late.”
“You think we should go to the other female specimen,” Kantrobil said. It wasn’t a question. They’d worked together a long time and knew each other’s minds well.
“Don’t you think it’s time? If it looked like patience might win through, then I’d be for waiting longer,” Felizian said. “Waste is distasteful and not useful. But it does not seem like recovery will happen in weeks, but in months, perhaps years. I am not sure we can wait that long for her to recover. We need to move forward with stage three.”
Kantrobil sighed but flicked his antlers in agreement. “I’ll make the arrangements to transfer the other specimen shortly. With luck, this one will work out better.”
“No trauma, which seems to have been the problem here,” Felizian said. “Although her background being the same as the male’s could cause issues of its own.”
“We’ll work on solving those problems if they arise,” Kantrobil said.
“I’ll make arrangements to deal with the first female,” Felizian said. “If she’s useless, I think euthanasia is the most humane way to treat her.”
“Agreed. What method do you propose?”
Felizian only had to think for a moment. “Utilizing the same illness we used for her people would only add to her trauma. The kaothu plant worked well enough and was painless. These animals seem attracted to bright red things.”
“That should suffice. Today?” Kantrobil asked.
“Yes.”
Thirty-Four
John had lived alone just fine, right up until he met Dana. He’d been doing pretty well for himself, a few near-death experiences notwithstanding. She’d thrown his entire world into chaos, even more than his mother’s death had.
“Six days of silence from the woman, and I can’t even concentrate on basic tasks,” John grumbled, shaking the thumb he’d just struck with his hatchet. “Cutting logs is becoming dangerous work.”
He shook his head, smiling at himself despite the throbbing digit. Head in the clouds. He deserved a stern reminder from the world to keep his mind on what he was doing. His home was more dangerous than ever, with the threat of attack by gators or other animals. That made a secure dwelling more important than ever.
John was still confident in his design. Dana’s people might have built their houses in trees, but maybe they hadn’t dealt with storms as fierce as the one which had struck John’s world. He’d watched trees blasted to bits by the sky lights. Now, every time it rained or dark clouds rolled in, he wondered if it was going to be a repeat of that one terrible night.
So far, his luck had held. But he wasn’t going to bet on it staying that way forever. Sticking with a ground based home in the shelter of the wall gave him some measure of protection from the sky lights. Building the base of the house out of a combination of stone and mud ought to be strong enough to keep even the most dedicated three-foot lizard out.
If something much bigger came along, he might still be in trouble. Dana had mentioned other predatory animals worse than the gators. He didn't want to deal with them but had to be ready.
“First, we deal with the threats we know about. Then we move on to the ones we don’t,” John said. “And I’m talking to myself again, aren’t I?”
He looked around. There was no deer keeping him company. Dana had been gone for many days. He saw her once, working on something across the river. But most of the time, she’d kept to the trees, out of sight. John wanted to go over and visit with her, but he also wanted to respect her need for space. He hoped she would come back on her own, but each passing day made that seem less likely.
It was growing harder day by day to stay focused on his work. John kept finding his thoughts drifting back to Dana. What was she doing? Was she getting by all right? Would she ever come back? John let himself remember that one evening they’d shared, and sighed. It had been a good day. Even with her injury, Dana had been happy to share her knowledge. And he’d been happy being in her company.
They were better together. More likely to survive whatever challenges faced them. But how was he supposed to help her see that?
John stood up, sliding the axe into his belt. She might be over there stewing as much as he, wondering why he hadn’t crossed over to see her yet. He started toward the river but stopped after taking just a few steps.
Or going there might be the thing that made her hate him, made her never want to return at all. Invading her privacy might be the worst thing John could possibly do. And he wouldn’t know, couldn’t know, which was true without trying. He exhaled hard. There must be something he could do!
“I’ll go to the river,” John said. “She can’t argue that. I need access to the water as much as she does.”
Maybe he could catch a glimpse of her there. Gauge her mood. Even say hello and see if she welcomed the gesture. Yes, that sounded like the right idea. The more John thought about it, the more certain he was that he was on to something. He couldn’t begin to understand Dana, but he knew this much: he wanted to learn.
It was a short walk to the riverbank, and he was sad to note there was no sign of her. He wasn’t surprised, though. The stream ran a long way through the middle of the world. He was very near to the wall. She could be someplace further downstream.
“Or she might not be anywhere close to the water,” he grumbled.
He didn’t think that was likely. It was a warm day, and the sun was almost directly overhead. He was already thirsty after just a few minutes from under the shade of the trees. After carefully checking the water for any sign of a gator, John stooped to drink. He had a feeling that Dana wouldn’t be too far from the water on a day like today. Though, maybe not too close—she certainly remembered the gator attack as well as he did.
All he needed to do was walk downstream until he saw her, or at least signs that she’d recently been there. Then he could, at the least, offer her a hello. That couldn’t be taken amiss. Right?
John proceeded down the riverbank toward the cliff edge. It didn’t take him long to find a spot on the far bank where Dana had clearly been making trips for water. He eyed the area—she’d done something, constructed something. She had placed a half-circle of branches around one spot on the bank. Each stick was facing out, like a spear stuck into the ground with the point upward.
He saw at once how effective that could be. While he didn’t think that a gator would be foolish enough to actually impale itself on one of the spears, it would be an obstacle. It would slow their approach. John waded out into the water toward the ring of spears to get a better look. He noted how Dana had strung a thin rope between the spears and nodded appreciatively. Anything trying to get between the spears would trip the rope and knock the adjoining sticks down into the water. Even if a gator got inside while she was away, she’d be alerted.
It was a good design. He walked around the ring, observing how she’d sharpened and placed each stake. John wondered if this was something her people had done, or if this was an idea she had come up with on her own. It was a good invention, whichever the case might be. He was going to want something like this on his own side of the river. It would make trips for water much safer.
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